French auto major working to forge a partnership with domestic players.
After re-establishing itself in the Indian car market, French auto major Renault is looking at expanding its presence by foraying into the commercial vehicle segment.
While a premium hatchback, a crossover and a sports utility vehicle are in the pipeline, Renault plans to foray into CV segment with a light truck. Marc Nassif, managing director, Renault India, said: “Right now there are ideas. We need to get the strategy right. We need to do a lot of homework before we deliver. It has to meet our price and quality standards.”
In May, the company launched its first locally-assembled car Fluence from its Chennai passenger vehicle manufacturing plant, which it shares with partner Nissan Motor Company.
Nissan has ventured into the light truck segment on its own forging ties with Chennai-based Ashok Leyland, India's second biggest CV maker. The joint venture company recently launched a light truck, Dost, which competes with Tata Motors’ Ace.
The Franco-Japanese alliance had signed a three-way tie up last year, which included equity swaps, co-operation for development of small cars and light commercial vehicles.
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“It’s a different kind of partnership sharing lot of things at various levels. In the research and development side, the development cycles are longer. We are making the next generation powertrain and platforms. We are designing the new Twingo and Smart platform. We might have opportunities on LCVs in the future. We do not have specific plans laid out for India yet but the door is open,” said Nassif.
While Daimler will be taking Renault-Nissan’s help to further develop the compact car platform, it will supply bigger capacity engines — four and six cylinder engines — to Nissan for its Infiniti range of premium cars.
Nissan and Renault share platforms, engines and transmissions as well as components for products made globally and in India. The strategy in India, however, is that Nissan will focus on the export market while Renault will develop the local market.
When Renault had first launched in 2005-06 partnering Mumbai-based utility vehicle maker Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) for an entry sedan, the company had been scouting for a partner to foray into the CV segment.
With well established players present in the commercial vehicle market, such as Tata Motors, Ashok Leyland, M&M, Eicher, Volvo Bajaj Auto, Piaggio, and new players such as General Motors and Beiqi Foton to name a few, the competition is expected to heat up in the CV space.